Brian Jackson

A Boy’s World

This article describes the impact of the mass media on the sensitive mind and imagination of a young child.

alan and graham are both ten. Each Tuesday afternoon I take their class for an English lesson whilst my own boys move across the corridor for a music period. During the half hour that we share, the boys are stimulated to act, draw or write about their daily lives freely and spontaneously. But I had not been working with them for very long before I noticed that whatever Alan drew or wrote or dramatised fell into a continuing pattern. He was absorbed by the prospect of death. He feared death intensely and was disturbed by it in the form of accident or punishment. He needed to explore the experience at the point of dying—and pulled many of his stories around to this characteristic situation . . .